Burton’s diary reveals love for ‘exciting, wilful’ Taylor

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Burton and Taylor in The Sandpiper of 1965. The diaries show a sensitive manEverett Collection/Rex Features

Simon de Bruxelles

Last updated at 12:01AM, August 15 2012

The depth of Richard Burton’s passion for Elizabeth Taylor is laid bare in
diary extracts to be published for the first time this year.

The actor, who died in 1984, was known for his voice, which he once described
as being “born with coal dust and rain and the authentic mystery of the dark
and tortured valleys” of South Wales. But the written voice expressed in his
diaries is just as distinctive.

His tempestuous love affair with Taylor, whom he married twice, was one of the
great romances of the 20th century. In a diary entry from November 1968 he